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It’s been a few months now that readers have been sending me horrifying pictures of Mike Tyson. Pictures that haunt my dreams wherein Mike Tyson is running after me with a flock of pigeons flanking him and then he reaches me and he starts yelling at me all, “[sthqueak sthqueak sthqueak sthqueak? Sthqueak sthqueak!].” Then I wake up screaming, trying to punch pigeons out of the air.

These are some of the pictures I have been emailed by concerned readers all, “SIT DOWN BEFORE YOU SCROLL DOWN!”

You see, Mike Tyson owns a flock of pigeons. He takes his flock of pigeons for jogs. He loves his knowing bastards, all of which I bet watch him while he sleeps, waiting for the perfect opportunity to peck the tattoos right off of his face, before ripping the gold teeth from his mouth and melting them down to make solid gold ninja swords, one of which you’ll find sticking out of the back of my lifeless body in a dark alley some day.

Of course, hearing that an animal will be used for any purpose other than existing and dying a natural death, PETA does what it does, which is always one of two things, protest naked or issue its own legitimately batshit crazy press release which makes all of the world point at PETA and laugh at their blatant batshit craziness.

I wonder how many times I can say batshit crazy in this post. Challenge accepted, you batshit crazy readers.

So PETA says:

PETA President Ingrid Newkirk says of Tyson’s breathtaking passion for his pigeons: “One wonders if Mike Tyson realizes that . . . these gentle, loyal birds who race their hearts out trying to get home to their life mates often end up lost in storms, or coming home just have their necks wrung for failure to beat their competitor’s time.”

Do you suppose there’s a job called Under-Performing Pigeon Neck-Wringer? I’m asking for a friend.

So, to sum up, we have PETA, pigeon lovers, picking a fight with Mike Tyson, also a pigeon lover. Know what I’d like to do? I’d like to add Bob Barker, pigeon lover, into this mix and I’d like to organize a mixed martial arts cage match to the death. I’ll be the ref.

@lisa j: it’s got a small college in it and it’s not Grove City. That help?

On CBS Evening News Monday night was a segment on a guy who raises fluttering pigeons, I think they’re called. They fly like regular pigeons and then do this spinning flutter-dive that looks for all the world like they’ve been shot down. Guy uses them to help steer inner city kids away from gangs and such. Looked pretty funny seeing them flutter out of the air, though.

Not to throw a damper on the discussion, but if you really want world-class bat shit crazy you have to look to the Iranian president, who is denying that 9-11 ever happened and claims it was some kind of illusion created by the US. And this guy wants us all to just let him and his scientists play with nukes unsupervised? That’s the kind of BAT.SHIT.CRAZY that Mike Tyson can only dream about.

You know, in PETA’s defense, if I had to pick one person who might get really competitive at some sport and then develop anger issues because he couldn’t succeed at that sport (because of under-performing pigeons), uh … yeah, Tyson. Why is it that I have no trouble imagining him wringing the neck of a slow pigeon?

Now, if the flock rejected their owner and started to hang out with a new owner, and the original owner was OJ …

I saw an article in this month’s…Spin, I think, or maybe Rolling Stone. Anyway. It featured a group from Brooklyn called Yeasayer and in it they were – I think – juggling pigeons. Really. I haven’t yet looked for it on the web, but I will.

The only thing you need to know about Ingrid Newkirk is that she equated the killing of broiler chickens in this country to the Holocaust and said if finding a cure for AIDS meant the death of one lab rat, she would be against it.